Commercial awareness in real estate courses

<b> Abstract</b><br /><b>Purpose –</b> The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how and to what extent commercial awareness is<br />embedded within the curriculum of the UK Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)-accredited<br />real estate courses. It also discusses the development of commercial awareness taxonomy.<br /><b>Design/methodology/approach</b> – This paper presents the research findings of questionnaire<br />survey and interviews with RICS-accredited real estate course providers in the UK. The questionnaire<br />aimed to gather course directors’ views on the definitions and components of commercial awareness<br />and identify what skills and attributes are required for its development. It also evaluated how<br />commercial awareness has been embedded in the real estate courses. The aim of the interview was to<br />gain deeper insight on how components of commercial awareness are embedded in real estate courses<br />and nine interviews were conducted. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded to identify<br />similar themes. The frequency of the answer in the questionnaire and comments from interviewees<br />is presented.<br /><b>Findings – </b>The UK real estate academics agreed the most important definition of commercial<br />awareness as that of a “person’s ability on understanding of the economics of business”. They agreed<br />that “strategic” is the most important component for commercial awareness, followed with “financial”<br />and “process”. However, the “financial” component is embedded the most in the curriculum. The most<br />important skill and attribute for commercial awareness development are “ability to define and solve<br />problems” and “ability and willingness to update professional knowledge”, respectively. Commercial<br />awareness was embedded in the overall curriculum and the key element for developing it is through<br />having “practical experience”.<br /><b>Originality/value</b> – This project is the first to conduct an in-depth analysis of commercial awareness<br />in real estate education. It also develops the pioneer commercial awareness taxonomy.<br /><b>Keywords </b>UK, Curriculum development, Commercial awareness, Curriculum enhancement,<br />Real estate education<br /><b>Paper type</b> Research paper